


Fragile Things

by Aliana



Series: Back to Middle-earth Month 2012 [17]
Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Sequence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 23:43:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/667824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliana/pseuds/Aliana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The (im)persistence of memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragile Things

**Author's Note:**

> **March 22**
> 
> **B2MeM Challenge: B4:** Luxury Items (Economy); Book of golden stories, days of open roads (Song Lyrics)  
>  **B14:** Fragile Things (Book Titles)  
>  **Format:** Drabble pair  
>  **Genre:** General  
>  **Rating:** General  
>  **Warnings:** Hobbit obliqueness?  
>  **Characters:** Frodo, Elanor, Sam, Merry

Already Elanor loves books. Still too young for letters, she loves them as objects, which is maybe the first and the purest way. In the laps of adults, she tries fine-grained covers with chubby hands, gapes at the shapes of words.

He’ll leave them all for her, then: vellum and ink and the yellowed paper. As the years wane, Frodo finds himself more sympathetic to Rohirric thought: cruel to pin language to page like some caught insect. Let it live in song, and on the road, and in the changing river-currents.

He puts down his quill, pictures water once more.

***

Over the years Mr. Frodo’s become a bigger hole in her father’s stories, a blank space between paragraphs. She’d been too young to remember, when he’d left.

(Left—strange word, as if he’d gone home early from a birthday-party.)

She scans the book-margins where he made notes—if his writing looks more hesitant with each page, that could be her imaginings.

In Buckland, she listens to Uncle Meriadoc’s tales, scribbles details. At one point he stays her hand: “Don’t take all to heart—I could be misremembering some things.”

She nods, smiles, thinking: that, too, is part of the story.


End file.
